A good businessman never makes a contract unless he's sure he can carry it through, yet every fool on earth is perfectly willing to sign a marriage contract without considering whether he can live up to it or not.
Dalton Trumbo

Democracy means that people can say what they want to. All the people. It means that they can vote as they wish. All the people. It means that they can worship God in any way they feel right, and that includes Christians and Jews and voodoo doctors as well.
Dalton Trumbo

Dishonesty in government is the business of every citizen. It is not enough to do your own job. There's no particular virtue in that. Democracy isn't a gift. It's a responsibility.
Dalton Trumbo

Everybody now seems to be talking about democracy. I don't understand this. As I think of it, democracy isn't like a Sunday suit to be brought out and worn only for parades. It's the kind of a life a decent man leads, it's something to live for and to die for.
Dalton Trumbo

I am one day going to be working openly in the motion picture industry. When that day comes, I swear to you that I will never sign a term contract with any major studio.
Dalton Trumbo

I fought fire with oil.
Dalton Trumbo

I never considered the working class anything other than something to get out of.
Dalton Trumbo

I will, proudly and by preference, do at least one picture a year for King Brothers, and I will try to make it the best picture that I have it in me to do.
Dalton Trumbo

Now the truth of the matter is that there are a lot of things people don't understand. Take the Einstein theory. Take taxes. Take love. Do you understand them? Neither do I. But they exist. They happen.
Dalton Trumbo

One of the disadvantages of being a patrician is that occasionally you're obliged to act like one.
Dalton Trumbo


Privately, I believe in none of them. Neither do you. Publicly, I believe in them all.
Dalton Trumbo

The chief internal enemies of any state are those public officials who betray the trust imposed upon them by the people.
Dalton Trumbo

The only interesting thing that can happen in a Swiss bedroom is suffocation by feather mattress.
Dalton Trumbo

The only kind of love worth having is the kind that goes on living and laughing and fighting and loving.
Dalton Trumbo

We'll free every slave in every town and region. Can anybody get a bigger army than that?
Dalton Trumbo